About the data
Where BizPulse numbers come from, what they mean, and what they don’t.
Sources
BizPulse is built on two public datasets published on the City of Chicago Data Portal:
- Business Licenses — every license issued, renewed, or changed in the city.
- Building Permits — construction, renovation, signage, demolition, and other permits, with the work description and reported cost.
We ingest both every day. The City publishes license records with a lag: a license typically appears in the public data about two days after it is issued, and nearly always within a week. Data is modified from its original source — BizPulse adds categories, newness and expansion flags, and permit-to-license address matching.
What counts as a new business
Most rows in the license feed are not new businesses. Roughly three of every four are renewals, and many of the rest are established operators adding a license type or another location. BizPulse counts a business as newonly when the license is the account’s first-ever Chicago business license. Licenses a new business files within two weeks of its first one count toward the same new business.
An established business licensing an additional address is counted separately, as an expanding operator.
Counts are based on first-ever Chicago business licenses. A license is not an opening date — some businesses open weeks later, and some are already operating when the license is issued.
Building permits
Permit dollar figures are the cost reported on the permit application, not an audited project budget. Permit types follow the City’s own categories (new construction, renovation/alteration, signs, wrecking/demolition, and so on). When we say a permit and a license share an address, we match them on a normalized street address, so counts of those overlaps are a conservative floor.
Neighborhoods, categories, and time windows
Neighborhood figures use Chicago’s official community areas. Business categories (restaurant, salon, auto repair, and so on) are assigned by BizPulse from each account’s license types, with automated review for ambiguous cases. Every count we publish names its window (for example, “the 30 days ending October 25”), and year-over-year comparisons use the same calendar window a year earlier.
Corrections
If a figure looks wrong, email hello@trybizpulse.com and we will check it against the source records. To request removal of a record about you, see our privacy policy.